![]() Tao is the most prominent example of a fictionalized restaurant opening that actually happened around the same time. Cut to season 4, and actual restaurant openings were not only name-checked on the show but fictional versions of their opening parties were recreated on the series. But in seasons 1 and 2, they were often based on real restaurants that had fictionalized names, like Balzac (in real life, based on the opening of SoHo’s Balthazar). SATC’s early seasons glamorized NYC restaurant openings and the PR world surrounding them. ![]() In 2019, owner Keith NcNally miraculously revived Pastis in partnership with restaurateur Stephen Starr in the space across the street at 52 Gansevoort (formerly Gansevoort Market). (These days it looks more like a Dubai mega mall.) If we were writing this list in 2018, Pastis wouldn’t have made the cut, as it was closed for nearly five years while Restoration Hardware took over its former space and built a massive Meatpacking District store with a restaurant of its own. The neighborhood itself was a prime filming location for the show during its later seasons, as it was previously home to a bustling LGBTQIA and nightclub scene. Some have pointed fingers at the restaurant for helping to gentrify the area. In its heyday in the early aughts, Pastis was indeed a celebrity hangout, and one of the first higher-end restaurants to open in the then rough-and-tumble Meatpacking District. It was the spot where her and then-boyfriend Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov) spent some cozy winter nights, and in season 4, she also brunched there with her buddy the gay shoewear rep, Oliver Spencer (Murray Bartlett). But given the choice between Tao - a place that feels like a dream you’d have after drinking several Four Lokos - and the relative snoozefest known as Cathédrale, we’ll take the former any day.Perhaps the most featured restaurant on the series, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) once described Pastis as “the only restaurant that seemed to exist” late in season 6 during a particularly cold stretch of winter. Does that mean you’ll find us at Tao later, drinking $20 vodka sodas while we try to get the DJ to play the 2 Chainz remix of “Bubble Butt”? It’s doubtful. Sure, they call the sea bass by its French name (loup de mer), and there are few items on the menu that are legitimately worth ordering - like the pristine caviar omelette and baguette with rotisserie drippings - but there’s no element of fun to justify the high prices and mostly mediocre food.ĭespite the huge space and constant crowd, Cathédrale is boring. Of course, food isn’t a bad thing for a restaurant (most people expect it), but going to a Tao Group spot purely to eat some gummy steak tartare and a $37 plate of forgettable sea bass is similar to attending jury duty just to hear someone call your name. Unlike Tao, there aren’t any sake bombs or bachelor parties to keep you entertained - there’s just food. It’s an impressive-looking spot, but a few minutes after sitting down, the effect wears off, and you wonder what’s next. And just past this luxurious-looking spread, there’s a dining room with ceilings high enough to inspire awe, rumination, and slight nausea. It has some big booths, a bar that could seat every person you’ve dated up to the present, and a table covered in apples, breadsticks, and champagne on ice (all of which appear to be purely decorative). To get to Cathédrale, find the Moxy Hotel on 11th street, walk down several flights of stairs, and enter a space that looks like a fancy mall bistro inside a dystopian place of worship. Without the ridiculousness the Tao Group has become known for, there isn’t much of a point in coming here. But, with its soups du jour, stiff service, and dad rock soundtrack, it also feels like a club restaurant undergoing a midlife crisis. ![]() It’s a pricey, elaborately designed restaurant where Heidi Klum hosted a Halloween party featuring the likes of Ice-T and Dylan Sprouse, and the food here is occasionally pretty good. Unfortunately, this place takes the worst parts of the Tao experience and leaves most of the fun behind.Ĭathédrale is a massive spot in the bottom of an East Village hotel specializing in vaguely French food. And when we went to Cathédrale, the latest spot from the people behind Tao, we anticipated something similar. ![]() Depending on your mindset, you can have a great time there. We understand Tao, and appreciate it for what it is: a cavernous party restaurant for people who want to do sake bombs, shout things, eat handfuls of popcorn shrimp, and temporarily drop any pretense that they’re adult human beings.
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